By Numbers Alone, Character Counts

Baltimore Orioles Hall of Famers, from left, Jim Palmer, Cal Ripken, Earl Weaver, Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson and Eddie Murray get together following the ceremony. (By Jonathan Newton -- The Washington Post)

"I don't think there is any doubt of it," said Gwynn, not mentioning Bonds by name. "The fans felt they could trust us. They could trust how we played the game, especially in this era, that we did it the right way.

"And I think the writers [who vote] felt that, too. There's no way I'm a 97.6 [percent] guy," said the eight-time batting champ, referring to his vote total, almost as high as Ripken's. On the same ballot, Mark McGwire got only 23.5 percent of the vote, perhaps the most resounding rejection in Hall history. This crowd, Gwynn said, was "about the type of people we were."

Tony was right. But so was Ripken who, refusing to concede Bonds any part of the stage, said that this day, this huge revival on a hillside, was simply about the sport itself -- and its health, in spite of all that is inflicted on it.

"This was about the fans love of baseball, from generation to generation. The game continues long after any of us put away our glove," Ripken said. "This demonstrates that baseball is alive, popular and good."

That last word -- "good" -- may have slipped out courtesy of Dr. Freud. Few athletes have, grudgingly at first, then eventually with a whole heart, so completely embraced the job of understated hero as a career mission. Throughout his acceptance speech, Ripken addressed this task of combining personal behavior with athletic performance.

"I didn't understand when I was younger," Ripken said. Once, he threw a helmet and teammate Ken Singleton showed him a tape of it and asked, "How does that look?" Another night, Ripken learned that a family had saved money to come to a game in which he had been ejected in the first inning "and their little boy cried the whole game." Eventually, he realized that he was a role model whether he liked it or not. "Kids see it all," he said. "Not just the big things. Everything." After that "baseball became a platform," he said.

"Games were and are important," Ripken said, "but people and how you impact on them are most important.

The chains of habit, it has been famously said, are too light to be felt until they are too strong to be broken. Perhaps that insight can be taken a step further. In many ways, our character is little more than a lifetime's collection of habits -- some consciously chosen, too many fallen into unawares.

Some people, by the guidance of family or who knows what, make crucial choices that lead them to the habits, to the relationships with others -- to the inspiring character -- that we find in Ripken and Gwynn. On days like this, we not only praise them for their athletic records. A Bonds can do as much. By the tens of thousands, we trek to a rural village for a reason we can hardly express. In a game, we have discovered people who can help us decide which chains of habit will define us.